Nintendo dishes out another stellar earnings report: DS has now outsold the GameBoy

Dean TakahashiOctober 30, 2008 1:03 AM

Nintendo reported another record for the six-month period from April to September. The record sales, profits and shipments move the company a step closer to dominating the games business.

Sales were 836.9 billion yen, or $8.85 billion, for the six months ended September 30, up 10.4 percent from a year ago. Net income was 144.8 billion yen, or $1.48 billion, up 9.4 percent from a year ago.

The improved sales, along with a strong forecast ahead, show that the company isn’t worried about the economic turmoil hurting its sales.

The Kyoto, Japan-based company said the lifetime sales of its Nintendo DS portable game player have hit 84.33 million, surpassing the lifetime sales of the original handheld, the Nintendo GameBoy, which has sold 81.36 million units to date. But because of the strong value of the yen, Nintendo revised its annual forecast for profits downward. Net income for the year is expected to be $4.2 billion. But strong sales of the Nintendo DS portable game player and Wii console prompted the company to keep its two trillion yen, or $20.5 billion, sales target for the year.

The company now expects to sell 207 million games for the DS this fiscal year, up from 197 million. And it expects to sell 27.5 million Wii consoles, up from the earlier forecast of 26.5 million. DS software sales have now hit 454.63 million. The biggest hit game, Nintendogs, has sold more than 20 million copies.

Lifetime shipments of the Wii, which debuted in 2006, have hit 34.55 million, compared to about 22 million for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and 16 million for the PlayStation 3. Wii games have sold 229.85 million units. The “Wii Fit” game has sold 8.7 million units. Nintendo will keep the pressure on Sony’s PlayStation Portable by launching a new version of the DS, dubbed the DSi, in the U.S. next year.